%0 Journal Article
%T Hey Fellows, We Shrunk the Server
%A Valentim Sousa
%A Paulo Ferreira
%A Manuel Gericota
%J International Journal of Online Engineering (iJOE)
%D 2012
%I Kassel University Press
%R 10.3991/ijoe.v8is2.1960
%X Remote laboratories are an essential part of Web-based engineering lecturing, enabling future engineers 24/7 access to lab resources. Furthermore, they allow sharing expensive resources among multiple universities and research centres. Typical remote lab architectures feature a server, normally a computer that may serve one or more experiments. Computers are generally bulky, somewhat expensive and require heavy resources to run complex operating systems. In this paper, a remote lab for the test of printed circuit boards and the programming/configuration of programmable logic devices and memories through a JTAG interface is presented. This lab is based on open source software and on a cheap router with OpenWrt firmware, a Linux distribution targeted at embedded systems, which acts as a processing unity. A router acting as a server is not a common solution in remote labs. When compared to a a? normala?  computer, the router has a lower processing and memory capacity. However, our results proved that it has a very good performance, and is able to cope with the desired task.
%K Electronic engineering education
%K Embedded software
%K Programmable logic devices
%K Remote laboratories
%U http://www.online-journals.org/index.php/i-joe/article/view/1960